Woman Who Killed Her Three Daughters Sentenced to Three Life Terms

A Greek woman sentenced to life last year for murdering her nine-year-old daughter, Georgina, has received two additional life terms for killing her two other children, Malena, 3, and Iris, who was just six months old.

On Tuesday, March 18, the court in Athens found that Roula Pispirigou suffocated her infant daughters Malena and Iris in 2019 and 2021, in what were ultimately unsuccessful attempts to prevent her husband from repeatedly abandoning her.

Following a trial that lasted 12 months, the 35-year-old woman from Patra was sentenced to two more life terms in prison after judges upheld the prosecutor’s position, which argued that Pispirigou was “methodical and calculating,” driven by an obsessive fixation on the girls’ father, Manos Daskalakis.

“She suffocated her children so that she could keep her husband close,” said the prosecutor, Vassiliki Dimopoulou.

Malena was killed in 2019 while in the hospital receiving treatment for leukemia, Iris was suffocated in her bed in 2021, and Georgina also died in a hospital, where she had been admitted after suffering “cardiac arrest,” in 2022.

Dimopoulou also accused the forensic examiners who investigated the girls’ deaths of negligence, stating that their “failures” allowed Pispirigou to get away with her crimes for years.

“They lacked a sense of responsibility and failed to conduct a thorough and serious investigation into the causes of de@th of three young children. Their work was sloppy and indifferent,” the prosecutor said.

Pispirigou’s appeal against the conviction for murdering Georgina is scheduled for May 5.